Download or read book Lemistry written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We know Stanislaw Lem, whether or not we consciously know that we do. He may only be recognised in the West as the author of the twice-filmed novel, Solaris, but the influence of his other work is legion. From computer games (The Sims was inspired by one of his short stories), to films (the red and blue pills of The Matrix owe much to his Futurological Congress); from the space comedies of Red Dwarf to the metaphysical satires of Douglas Adams... the presence of this masterly Polish writer can be traced far and wide. Nor was his genius confined to fiction. Lem's essays and pseudo-essays borne out of the military industrial tensions of the Cold War have outlived their original context and speak to the most current developments in virtual reality, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. To celebrate his name, as well as his vision, this anthology brings together writers, critics and scientists who continue to grapple with his concerns. British and Polish novelists join screenwriters, poets, computer engineers, and artists, to celebrate and explore Lem's legacy through short stories and essays - two literary forms that, as Lem knew well, can blend together to create something altogether new. As one of the barriers to Lem's fame was language, this book also features specially commissioned translations: three stories never to have appeared in English before. Lem was always ahead of us. It's time we caught up.
Download or read book Minutes of State Board of Education written by California. State Board of Education and published by . This book was released on 1960-02 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Book of Tokyo written by Hideo Furukawa and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’
Download or read book Beta Life written by Martyn Bedford and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computers are changing. Soon the silicon chip will seem like a clunky antique amid the bounty of more exotic processes on offer. Robots are changing too; material evolution and swarm intelligence are creating a new generation of devices that will diverge and disperse into a balanced ecosystem of humans and ‘robjects’ (robotic objects). Somewhere in between, we humans will have to change also… in the way we interact with technology, the roles we adopt in an increasingly ‘intelligent’ environment, and how we interface with each other. The driving motors behind many of these changes will be artificial life (A-Life) and unconventional computing. How exactly they will impact on our world is still an open question. But in the spirit of collective intelligence, this anthology brings together 38 scientists and authors, working in pairs, to imagine what life (and A-Life) will look like in the year 2070. Every kind of technology is imagined: from lie-detection glasses to military swarmbots, brain-interfacing implants to synthetically ‘grown’ skyscrapers, revolution-inciting computer games to synthetically engineered haute cuisine. All artificial life is here. Featuring scientific contributions from: Martyn Amos, J. Mark Bishop, Seth Bullock, Stephen Dunne, James Dyke, Christian Jantzen, Francesco Mondada, James D. O'Shea, Andrew Philippides, Lenka Pitonakova, Steen Rasmussen, Thomas S. Ray, Micah Rosenkind, James Snowdon, Susan Stepney, Germán Terrazas, Andrew Vardy and Alan Winfield. Supported by TRUCE (Training and Research in Unconventional Computation in Europe).
Download or read book A Perfect Vacuum written by Stanisław Lem and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a perfect vacuum, Stanislaw Lem presents a collection of book reviews of nonexistent works of literature - works that, in many cases, could not possibly be written. Embracing postmodernism's "games for games' sake" ethos, Lem joins the contest with hilarious and grotesque results." "Most of the "reviews" target the postmodern infatuation with antinarratives by lampooning their self-indulgence and exploiting their mannerisms. Lem exposes the limits of postmodern fiction, showing how its studious self-consciousness frequently conceals intellectual paucity. Beginning with a review of his own book, Lem moves on to tackle (or create pastiches of) the French new novel, James Joyce, pornography, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky, while at the same time ranging across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book SuperZero and the Clone Crisis written by Jane de Souza and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-10-26 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With great trouble come great laughs! Everyone including BigaByte is in a lousy mood because someone’s stealing their laughs? Whaaa? Plus SuperZero’s mom has a bewildering surprise for him. Plus, plus, plus there is a cunning clone in school who is turning himself into everyone else and creating full-on chaos. (Pssst, that’s your cue, SuperZero. Do your thing!)
Download or read book The Cyberiad written by Stanisław Lem and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. They travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their employers.
Download or read book Catalog written by University of South Dakota and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Summa Technologiae written by Stanisław Lem and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Polish writer Stanislaw Lem is best known to English-speaking readers as the author of the 1961 science fiction novel Solaris, adapted into a meditative film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and remade in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh. Throughout his writings, comprising dozens of science fiction novels and short stories, Lem offered deeply philosophical and bitingly satirical reflections on the limitations of both science and humanity. In Summa Technologiae—his major work of nonfiction, first published in 1964 and now available in English for the first time—Lem produced an engaging and caustically logical philosophical treatise about human and nonhuman life in its past, present, and future forms. After five decades Summa Technologiae has lost none of its intellectual or critical significance. Indeed, many of Lem’s conjectures about future technologies have now come true: from artificial intelligence, bionics, and nanotechnology to the dangers of information overload, the concept underlying Internet search engines, and the idea of virtual reality. More important for its continued relevance, however, is Lem’s rigorous investigation into the parallel development of biological and technical evolution and his conclusion that technology will outlive humanity. Preceding Richard Dawkins’s understanding of evolution as a blind watchmaker by more than two decades, Lem posits evolution as opportunistic, shortsighted, extravagant, and illogical. Strikingly original and still timely, Summa Technologiae resonates with a wide range of contemporary debates about information and new media, the life sciences, and the emerging relationship between technology and humanity.
Download or read book Quartier Perdu written by Sean O'Brien and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheltering from an air raid in an empty underground station, a young woman encounters a strangely out-of-place vessel passing along the platform... A librarian cataloguing the manuscripts of a recently deceased horror writer notices one particular box, relating to his most mystical work, has disappeared... A young academic takes up residency in the former home of an obscure, Dutch poet in order to better understand the strange rumours surrounding his demise... Sean O’Brien’s stories are all lit with the unmistakable hue of the Victorian gothic: from the rantings of a deranged psychiatric patient, to the apparition of demons swarming into a remote, rural railway station; solemn oaths are broken and need atoning for; minor transgressions are met with outlandish curses. Often we join O’Brien’s protagonists attempting to take time out from their troubles, but removing themselves from their normal lives only lets the supernatural in, and before they know it personal demons find very literal ones to conspire with.
Download or read book Thought X written by Robin Ince and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring leading scientists acting as consultants on the stories, and writing scientific afterwords, bringing the theory featured in the stories to life, including Prof. Sarah Bridle (Jodrell Bank), Prof. Jonathan Wolff and Prof. Frank Jackson (the inventor of the 'Mary's Room' thought experiment). Science is always telling stories. Whether in the creation myths of evolution or the Big Bang, or in the eureka moments of science history, narrative – just as much as metaphor – is a key tool in the scientist’s surprisingly literary toolkit. Perhaps the most interesting use of story is the thought experiment, the intuition pump, that draws on the most instinctive parts of the imagination to crack otherwise perplexing problems. From Newton's Bucket, to Maxwell’s Demon, from Einstein's Lift to Schrödinger’s Cat – all are examples of 'fiction' being used at the highest level, not just to explain, but to deduce, to prove. In this unique anthology, authors have collaborated with leading scientists, to bounce literary, human narratives against purely theoretical ones, alloying together real stories with abstract ones, to produce truly extraordinary results. Full list of thought experiments: The Twin Paradox, The Grandfather Paradox, Maxwell's Demon, Laplace's Demon, Mary's Room, The Chinese Room, Schrödinger's Cat, Galileo's Boat, The Infinite Monkey Typing Pool, Einstein in a LIft, Einstein Chasing a Beam of Light, Newton's Bucket, Olber's Paradox.
Download or read book Research in Home Economics at the Land grant Institutions written by and published by . This book was released on 1931 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The War Power written by Louis Fisher and published by American Historical Assn.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Spindles written by Deborah Levy and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-10-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries, sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient – a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last ten years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead, it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity: a vital stage in the re-wiring of memories, the learning of new skills, and the processing of problems and emotions. How will storytelling respond to this new and emerging science of sleep? Here, 14 authors have been invited to work with key scientists to explore various aspects of sleep research: from the possibilities of ‘sleep engineering’ and ‘overnight therapies’, to future-tech ways of harnessing sleep’s problem-solving powers, to the challenges posed by our increasingly 24-hour lifestyles. Just as new hypotheses are being put forward, old hunches are also being confirmed (there’s now a scientific basis for the time-worn advice ‘to sleep on a problem’). As these responses show, sleep and the spinning of stories are still very much entwined. Featuring scientific contributions from: Prof Russell G. Foster, Isabel Hutchison, Dr. Simon Kyle, Dr. Penny Lewis, Dr. Paul Reading, Stephanie Romiszewski, Prof Robert Stickgold, Prof Manuel Schabus, Prof Ed Watkins, Prof Adam Zeman, Dr. Thomas Wehr. This project was supported by the Wellcome Trust.
Download or read book Miscellaneous Publication written by and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 1188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Agricultural Libraries Information Notes written by and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Energy and water development appropriations for 1985 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 1468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
